27/06/2008

Six-Four

A large number of people decided that they'd had enough, that their goverment needed a more democratic approach, and that their society needed a change for the better. It started of with 10 000 students sitting at a square. It soon grew to 100 000 people protesting against what they felt was a unjust government. 1 000 of these went on a hungerstrike that for some lasted 3 weeks. The protests lasted for almost a month, but since there was no clear message behind them, other than that they where for a reform of the government, things became highly confused. Same thing happened with the government. Some where in support of the protesters, some where not. The ones against the protests soon got the upper hand and declared martial law, sending the military in. This, of course, resulted in a lot of deaths. Most sources seem to place the numbers in the thousands, and at least some of the dead where military personel. They stormed the sqaure, shooting indescriminatly, beating up anyone for just being there. People hidding in busses, or leaving the square as well. All of this happened before I had turned 2 years old, but I've always heard about it from my mom, who visited that same square a few years before all of this happened. I can only imagine what she felt when she watched this on tv when it took place. And a lot of it ended up on tv, despite the censur and media control of the country in question. This was because at that time, the Russian president was visiting, so it was to some degree a stroke of luck that we know so much that we do. The image of the man standing if front of the tank, refusing to move is probably the one image a lot of people have burned onto their retina. We still don't know who he was, if he got executed for it, or if he lives in hiding somewhere to this day. In conclusion, about an hour of documentry about the "incident" in 1989, and quite a lot about China today, and why we don't care about the obvious disregard for human rights, censorship, and general fasicm in todays China.

19/06/2008

The FRA-law passed

Which of course pisses me off to no end. Soon we'll have to salute the leader, as he drives around with a military honor guard, only there to kill anyone who might say something critical. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fucking fuckery fuck. There are some good things about this though. For instance, there are only two politicians in the sitting government that actually are on the same page as the rest of the people. One voted no, the other forfeited his vote in protest of the proposition. Both have gotten hundreds of flowers sent to them in support, and also as a statement to show the rest of the government that they fucked up. People are now instead encouraged to donate the money to Journalists Whiteout Borders, since they don't have any place to put all the flowers, and journalists just had their jobs get a whole lot harder. Most things are bad though. IT-companies are from now on going to try and avoid Sweden, which means the government just shot itself in the foot. So, we get a law that drives away investors, is in violation of our constitution, and most people seem to be against? This makes sense! In fact, it would only make more sense if a dancing monkey wearing clogs and playing a xylophone showed up! But hey, this more or less guarantees that the current government will be replaced once the election comes in two years. They are already looking bad in the ratings, and this kind of things can't exactly help. The fact that the Liberals actually supported this law is a bit mind blowing really, since they're the ones supposed to be big on personal freedom, the rights of the individual and all that. Apparently not, but I still salute the people who dared state, despite no one supporting them in their party, that they were against this law. That took some serious balls. I wish we had more politicians like that actually... But who doesn't? And along with the flowers also came protest against the decision via email. 350 so far, but I'm thinking it's gonna rise quite a bit. I know, 350 might not sound much, but it's apparently quite a bit in Sweden, and considering we only got around 9 million people living here, that makes up for it. A bit. I'll be writing a mail to eventually. I'm gonna work on it a bit though, sharpen the edges until you could go blind from looking it at. Then I'll send it. Fuckers...

18/06/2008

Awesome tv

One of my favorite shows when I was a really small kid was Ika I Rutan, it's a Swedish show about a woman who looks like a early goth, who mimes, dances like John Cleese, and does a lot of random things, often accompanied by some slightly psychotic music. The show had a more or less psychedelic feel about it, and has probably affected a whole generation of young Swedes to some degree. Some loved it, some were terrified of it. Hell, some still have nightmares about it. Here's another example:

I think you get why this show could be scary for a young child now. Though I don't care, I'm gonna show this to my future kids either way. It's still tons better than this a lot of the Disney-crap out there... Though I love the Lion King as well I have to say. Here's another Ika-clip, she's invented a dancing-spray, to make people dance:

And to round things of, a longer clip where she's trying to scare us, and learn us how to scare people. Don't miss the vampire, the egg, or anything else awesome!

Vegetable Genocide

I have a garden. I don't rake care of it nearly enough though, so whenever I feel like blowing of some steam I go there and rip up defenseless plants the size of smaller trees with my bare hands. I nearly wrote bear hands for some reason. Could have been a Freudian slip, or maybe I do hands the size of other peoples buttocks? I wonder if having huge hand would be counted as a superpower? Should I use this power for good or bad? Punch bad guys? Rob department stores, and hurl refrigerators at anyone who tries to stop me? Either way, my garden is starting to look like a garden again. I'm not sure this is a good thing though, since I'm used to it looking like a flyover photo of the rain forest. Though I suppose this means I might actually be able to grow something, which is always nice if you feel like feeding your delusions of being a god. "I am Enkahi, creator of all life. I spill my seed and plants rise towards the skies, great and mighty. Out of the pods on these plants, the hairless monkeys emerge, their task it to bring me gifts, and worship my mighty jaw!" Furthermore, my great powers of observations have revealed to me that, Warren Ellis, the real reason behind the reformation of the church (it was originally just a drunken prank), lives in London. Why I didn't know this is a great mystery, almost as huge as the entire plot of the X-files. Though I'm not sure why this is public knowledge, his enemies might just decide to get him with a thermonuclear strike, just to be sure. I could of course use my divine powers, which of course include la parkour, juggling, and perfect balance. Those are the ones I like anyway. I do have superskin, teeth that can pulverize bars of steel, and my giant fists as well, but those aren't nearly as fun. Leaping trough the air and grabbing a hold of a ledge with your teeth looks quite neat, but it tastes like ass, so I wouldn't recommend it. Plus, you might die, which isn't much fun either to tell you the truth.

16/06/2008

Angry Sad Bum

My monetary status is at the moment quite dead. I just had to remove a chocolate bar when paying at the store, since I didn't have enough money to pay for both that and the milk I bought. In fact, I don't know if I've been this poor before. Luckily I have some nice friends who buy me ice cream from time to time, so I'm surviving on that, pasta and pancakes this summer. And I just found out that M.I.A canceled her entire summer tour, which makes me feel both sad and angry. I was so looking forward to seeing her, but right now I feel more like sitting inside mopping all summer. Luckily there's still a load of awesome bands playing at the festival, so I still have that to look forward to. The Go! Team, Interpool, Danger, MSTRKRFT, Surkin, Hot Chip, Robyn, and all kinds of awesome Swedish acts that you've probably never heard of unless you live in Scandinavia. Besides, I'm too lazy to write a long list. Gotta think of my bum image you know.

15/06/2008

The Hipster

This is not a piece about why hipsters suck. In fact, it's more a piece about what the hell it is, why I don't care about it, and why you shouldn't either. When people started using the term a hipster was someone who listened to the latest music, someone who was en par with good musical journalists (MTV does not count), and often listened to stuff that most people hadn't even heard about yet. Now, it means more or less the same as indie used to, before that became mainstream too. Hell, hipsters are turning mainstream as I write this. If you listened to Feist, Regina Spektor, Justice and so on before they became famous via iPod commercials (the bane of any hipster status a band might have), the latest album or whatnot, chances are good you used to be a hipster. It's not as clear if your one now though. I guess it depends on what you listen to really. Ever heard of Danger? If you have, you might be a hipster, if you haven't, it's one of the better French electro acts, along with Surkin and SebastiAn. Yeah, I'm a hipster, at least when it comes to music, and of course I'm a hipster of the old school. Sounds like a really dumb fucking thing to say, but there it is. A hipster is not all about the music though. There's also a certain kinda of clothes that's considered "hipster". The "terrorist scarf" for instance, add a couple of Converse, glasses with thick black rims, a beard and a band tee for some obscure Japanese folk or something. Maybe a plaid shirt too? It doesn't really matter as much though, since a hipster to me is mainly about the music, and not about how you look. If I thought it was more about how you dressed, I wouldn't be calling myself a hipster. That, and I'm hoping some hipster might get angry at me for calling myself a hipster... Either way, a hipster now is a middle class young adult with nothing better to do than spend hours on Pitchfork and music forums, whining over the latest record by the Animal Collective. The hipster is the new indie, and it wouldn't surprise me if the label hispter is attached to any band who is indie, but not indie rock in a few years time. But I get why people don't like hipsters. Because most hipsters are so into music, they tend to frown and look down upon anyone who don't truly listen to anything, and at least a few bands who most people haven't heard of. No wonder ordinary people wanna punch them in the face from time to time, but if they're one of these faux hipsters who only follow Pitchfork, don't discover music themselves, and are still acting like you're a cunt for not having heard Bjorks latest album... Just punch them in the face.

The Swedish FRA-law

The FRA-law is a law that basically means that the Swedish goverment have the right to check all Internet traffic passing trough Sweden. This means that they don't need any permission to check what I'm writing here, in case they can come up with a reason to do so. In a sense it's more or less the same thing that goes on in China, Burma and other dictatorships. What shocking with this is that it's in Sweden of all places. The closest they've ever come to a terrorist attack was when a bunch of angry people burned a Swedish flag by mistake while they were protesting against the Danish Mohammed drawings. Though that's apparently enough to start turning Sweden into an Orwellian state. I'd imagine the next step would be a small forest of surveillance cameras all over the big cities. Then maybe we could have a curfew, to prevent "suspicious activities"? And you might think I'm being a bit "end of the world" here, but when spokespersons from Goggle say that "this kind of thing shouldn't have any place in a western democracy." And say it's more the kind of things you'd expect from China or Saudi Arabia, we can start worry. The law also works against journalists and the media, since they'll have a harder time keeping their sources secure. The law also states that traffic that doesn't cross over the Swedish border wont be monitored, which is of course pure bullshit, since almost all traffic taking place between people in Sweden pass the border anyway. If you know how the Internet works, that would come as no surprise to you, company's have servers all over the world, so there's no way to make sure your traffic stays national. Basically, Swedes might soon be guilty until proved innocent, and there would be no way of stopping the government from registering peoples opinions if they want to. Hopefully the law wont pass, but I'd advise any Swedes to start getting encryption keys, using darknets and so on. Or just start chain letters about murdering politicians and blowing up buildings. And you have to wonder, why would this law show up all of a sudden? It seems to have an uncanny resemblance to the undemocratic Patriot Act, and I wouldn't be surprised if there is a connection to the US somewhere along the line. Terrorism seems to be the universal excuse to push trough laws and regulations that the people don't need or benefit from these days, so it wouldn't come as a surprise if that's at least hinted at if the law is passed. I'm betting "state", "security" and "safety" will be used too, all words that seem to be closer to fascism than their literal meaning these days...

14/06/2008

Darth Vader Strikes Back

Yupp, seems like Britain recently had it's first accounted case of mortal combat between the Sith and the Jedi. Apparently the founder of the Britain's Jedi Church had angered the mighty lord Vader, and in a fit of drunken rage he decided to strike down the offending element with a metal crutch. It seems the recent years has been hard on old Vader, he apparently had to pawn his lightsaber to afford booze, and his suit was replaced by a black garbage bag. Though he was still wearing his helmet, which gleamed in the sun as he bested his sworn Jedi enemy in single combat. This all happened during an interview with the Sun, where suddenly Vader came leaping over the fence into the garden of the Jedi Master. After he had beaten the Jedi, he decided to strike down reporters as well for good measure. Sounds reasonable to me. The police does obviously like to have a word with him about all this, but I have a feeling Vader wont go down that easily...

12/06/2008

What do I belive?

I started to think about this after reading one of Penny Reds latest posts. What the hell do I believe? And the truth is, I can't think of anything that I am absolutely certain about. Sure, I'm against killing people, not because life is sacred or anything Disney-esque like that. I'm generally against killing people because it's a bad way to solve a disagreement. It's an awesomely flawed argument though, so I don't really hold it as a truth or anything. It does work better if you take it to the personal level, but then it's more about fighting than killing people either way. You can't really punch someone into agreeing with you, though I suppose you could beat someone up over you disagreeing with them sleeping with your spouse or something. Either way, I do believe that a lot of todays media suck humongous snail dongs, and they're apparently absorbing the putrid waste of popular culture and political opinions of others, and publishing this as news. The media is supposed to tell us what the hell is going on thats important, not what amuses us the most. Sure, a light-hearted piece once in a while is fine, but a paper full of 20 pages about a bunch of famous retards that wouldn't even be in paper if they weren't famous has as much with news to do as a duck with two assholes. Then we have consumption, the form of todays society, the rule of the market, the pointless scaremongering being done by politicians and media about terrorism, people starving because of poverty, people starving because they think they look better that way... Fuck! It's the one thing rich and poor people have in common! Stop the presses, Marx was wrong! Maybe if we increase the gap even more, we can all die of starvation together! Oh, I'm left by the way, in fact, I could be so far left that I'll punch you in the kneecap from the right... I'm not very serious thought, am I? Sure, I do my little Spider Jerusalem-impersonation from time to time, but most of what I say are things I stand for. I'm all for better resource management. Translated for those of us who didn't finish kindergarten, that's translated into "thinking before you buy". This means two things: I almost only buy clothes that's second hand, and I buy cheap, healthy food. Meaning I look awesome, both physically and fashion-vise. No, I do not wear a suit at all times. Suits are to safe. Safe is boring. I would wear a suit with red high tops and a red "terrorist scarf", as it's been dubbed by the think-tank over at Fox News. So, I don't believe in the consummation society of today, I don't believe we need a lot of the crap we end up getting. Water boilers, micro wave ovens, hairdryers, bottled watter, hell, we wouldn't even need tooth brushes if the food industry didn't put sweeteners in everything. Who's fault is it then? I could go with the politically correct answer and say human nature, but that's just an excuse for our ignorance. We've come miles when it comes to technology, but we're still barely more intelligent than chimps. (I appologise to any chimps reading this, you clearly are superior than humans when it comes to pure brainpower.) So, let me ask you, would you put a chimp in a jet fighter? On the moon? In the White House? Don't even think about answering that last one... I might have a stroke, and I'll make sure you get locked up for first degree murder. I don't know how, but you're fucked. Hell, we're probably all fucked either way when you think about it...

10/06/2008

A tulpa, or not a tulpa?

Ever heard that word? Tulpa. It has nothing to do with tulips, tumblers or anything else in the realm of biology. A tulpa is a thoughtform given life. Though, that's of course not all of it. A tulpa is a being created, or given life, by willpower alone. It could be an exact copy of your own body, or look completely different, it depends on what shape it is given by the person or persons imagining it, and I suspect it would also depend on what it's purpose is. So, from what I've understood, there are 2 forms of tulpas. One that is created by a single person, often a yogi of some kind, who have achieved such a knowledge and insight that he can even disassemble his own body in order to fool death. Of course, creating a tulpa is not a hard thing for such a person, since he must have an exceptional will. The other is one created by a group of people, either trough superstition, or consciously creating it in order to reach a certain goal. The first one mostly only lasts for a short time, since it takes a lot of will and focus of the people/person who created it for it to last. But if a group of people create it, with the right methods and devote enough thought to it, it can last past the death of it's creators. In some cases the tupla exists as more of a spiritual being, with no way of influencing the physical world, in others it can manipulate the matter just like us. The difference is that since it is made from several peoples thoughts, it is a lot stronger than normal people in both body and mind. Hence, if a person loses control of it, it might end up killing it's creator. Sorta like Frankenstein and his monster. Ever said that you wanted two of you to manage everything you have to do? Well, think about long and hard enough and you might get what you wish for. Though, if you lose control, you might end up killed by your own thoughts and will. Still, I wouldn't mind getting to know how to make a tulpa. It might come in handy...

The future: It's coming for you

Well, a lot of things are happening lately that I find quite interesting. A lot of which I've heard about trough Warren Ellis blog/page/library or whatever you wanna call it. First of, we might soon be able to ditch our cellphones, mp3 players, and laptops, since we might be carrying our tech on us in the future. Or at least when the pucks gets smaller that is. Hell, I'd probably use em now if I could, and they actually did something that is. But that's getting ahead of the development I suppose. Still, I kinda hope we can use this to carry around more or less whatever we want to. Imagine what a hacker might do with this... It should come as no surprise that I have a stupid little smile on my face. This is the future I've dreamed of, and it's starting to appear right in front of me. Then we have what might be ice on Mars. Which sets of another line of thoughts of people hunting Marsian mega wombats, equipped with a thin coat of "pucks" that check their medical status, their position, metrological conditions, meteors about to enter the atmosphere, and where the damned wombats are. As well as making sure we know the latest news, who's wining the Milky Way Olympics this year, what color goes with the atmospheric changes on Mars this time of year, and so on. So, soon we'll be living on Mars, and having our own personal computer attached to our skin in the form of a small network of little "pucks" using the skin as a relay. Just remember to take them off before getting into a bathtub, and you should be fine.

09/06/2008

A few days into the cold

I got up about 1 and a half hour ago. I'm still eating breakfast, my hair looks like someone made if from concrete and firecrackers, and I have to convince people to give me money so that I don't have to pay as much rent on a monthly basis. Other than that, I need to do some gardening, and get my head out of my tiny dick so that I actually do the finishing touches on that humongous essay I wrote some time ago. This is my "to-do" list of today. And I have to buy noodles. And survive on those for 20 days. Something tells me I'm gonna hate noodles after those days are trough. Oh, and I'm tagging along as a friend does some other stuff, mostly involving tattoos and piercings from what I understood. This is my day, as far as I know, before it's really begun. Sometimes you just want a pocket universe where you could hide out and do all the things you want to do that you don't have the time for in this. My god, that would come in handy. In other news: there's a mocking bird outside my window. It's sitting on this branch of a small tree, swaying in the wind, apparently mocking me with it's weird laughter. What are these god damned animals? Here, read this while I'm gone. It's a article about why time goes one why, how this explains the universe, big bang happened, and why that doesn't really matter anyway. Plus, it's supported by the second law of thermodynamics. Or, it's a theory about all this at least. Either way, awesome stuff.

02/06/2008

A cold and what passed and followed

I'm getting one. I'm not certain of it. It feels as if my throat is a small one person elevator in some shitty easter Europeans hostel, where the elevator itself looks more like a big birdcage hauled up and down with a great old chain. This elevator has stopped in the middle and two world championship sumo wrestlers have just got on. Needless to say, it's uncomfortable. And from the way my throat is feeling, I'd say they're having a cage fight in there. And since this is a day where I've only slept 3 hours to prepare for it, having washed clothes for another 7 hours starting at 7 in the morning, and just got in from cutting my lawn, the timing is perfect. Then I have some other stuff to do. First I need to get some food. I'm starving to death right now. Then I need a shower, or getting hit by a ocean for a few hours, doesn't really matter which. I still need to fix those last few details on my essay, vacuum the floor, do the dishes, and get to bed. After I've folded the last of my laundry, and made the bed of course. Though I suppose it's not all bad. I spoke to an American friend of mine for 3 hours via IM, which was nice. I got into a YouTube argument with a creationist (cheap entertainment). I like taking showers, so I have no idea why I mentioned it before. And hey, Alien is showing on the tele in a hour. Nifty. I had some other thoughts though. For instance, while fighting the laundro-bots, I started to think about law. To be more precise, what the purpose of the law is. I think most of us knows that laws are for maintaining society. They protect us, society, and the bond between us. But then I started to wonder, which of these are it's main purpose to protect? The law (and I don't mean the cops here) seems to be made to preserve society. Based on British liberalism, the purpose of society is to create a safe environment for the people in it. This is achieved by them giving up some of their freedom in exchange for safety. The idea is that the people agree to let different parts of the administration take care crime, and they don't take matters into their own hands and obey the law. If you break the law, you are no longer a part of the society one might say. So you either get locked up, or thrown out of society. But what happens if you can't leave society? If you don't have a choice? The media keeps telling us that we can become super successful movie star-esque people if we only buy this, do that, worship Xenu, or some other bullshit. The truth is, we can't. There can only be so many successful people at the same time, because if everyone is successful, they just become ordinary people. It doesn't really matter that you get attention, what matters is what you get attention for. Take the last years party stars for instance. And for the record, they're just as pathetic that anyone of us would be if we did the same things. They're famous for acting like idiots. Much like the stars of shows like Jackass and Dirty Sanchez. A comparison both of these groups of people hopefully find offensive. Now, if a you get famous for being a idiot, which is simple, why waste time actually developing any talent, when you can just as well get partial fame by running naked trough central London wearing a sword and a feather boa, high as a kite on heroin? I getting away from the point though. The one about law. The point is, essentially, that society is a system were born into. We don't really have a choice. And if we don't have the financial power to leave the system for another, or leave it entirely, what choice do we have? The only thing we can do is try to adapt, and if the only way we have of doing this is to emulate what we learn through our senses, and education has been more or less replaced by movies and television, what then? We become the intellectual caveman of society, that's what. Some inspiration gotten from Penny Red. Go read her blog, it's quite good, since I have to actually think when I read it.

Laundry Day

Which, not unlike Garbage Day(!) is, quite an unpleasant thing to experience. At least if you're me. Not that it's not nice to have clean clothes and linens, but what comes before that is a pain. Usually, I force myself to rise at an ungodly hour that is closer to when I go to bed than to when I get up, smelling badly, since I haven't bothered showering, since it's laundry day after all. You shower on laundry day, not before. This day however, is worse. I'm stressed, since I haven't payed my bills yet, I've got acid reflux, which is annoying, but entirely my own fault. Unless the food industry counts for making too acidic food or something... And I seem to be developing a headache. I never have headaches. Oh, and since it's laundry day, I look like a combination of a drug addict and a hobo. A nice one though, so that's a plus I suppose. At least I don't look like Wolverine from the X-men, like I did yesterday when I got up... I'm still not sure if that's good or bad though. Either way, I look like the kind of dude who says "dude!" a lot. Which would be fine if I was the Iron Monger, and had to fight Tony Stark. In a cave. Made from scraps.

Before bed posting

Just felt like I had to update. Not that I really have anything to say at the moment, but still I have to say it. One thing I could say is that Ghost in the Shell is probably the reason why I've developed an interest in politics. Not that you would have noticed that here. I don't write about it at all really, since I feel I don't know enough about it. Sure, I consider myself a liberal Marxist, but I'm not sure how true that statement really is. Let me clarify: I think that a Marxist economy would be the best one, while I'm more fond of a liberal political view, since I'm not entirely comfortable with handing over all the power and money to the same people. It is their job, and we have ways of making sure they do it, but they're still just people after all. Another thing, quite related to the first actually, is that Cowboy Bebop got me into bebop. Sounds kinda dumb, but that's the truth. Charlie Parker is a new favorite for instance, but I still have loads that I've yet to listen to, and more so that I need to listen to some more to get a feel for it. Actually, this is true for music in general, even though I can easily spend 10 hours a day listening to music I don't seem to hear it. Maybe I should stop doing other things at the same time... Though I'd probably have to stop sleeping for that to work out, or actually start doing things efficiently from now on. Either way, I suppose I should be going to bed now. Got laundry in 4 hours, which means I'm gonna be incredibly tired the entire day tomorrow. I tend to sleep around 10 hours normally (meaning when I don't have to get up) so it's gonna be a bit rough. Still, better than skipping sleep entirely, which I've actually done a few times. Not recommended.

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